Why I Shouldn't Be Allowed To Cook

• 3rd December 2006 at 23:29

So Leela was away this weekend, and I was left to feed myself. Normally this would involve toast, cheese, pasta, or a takeaway, but Leela left me with a list of the things in the freezer that I could probably eat, and one of those was a burger.

Mmm, I like burgers, I thought, so I pulled out the frozen slab of raw meat and read the instructions. "Best grilled. Cook from frozen under a medium grill for 20 minutes."

Now, everyone knows that meat is dangerous if under-cooked. Nobody knows exactly why - that information was lost centuries ago - but thankfully the warning has survived, passed down by the eldest male child in each family from generation to generation.

Bearing the wise words of my ancestors in mind, I decided to put the grill on high, and to grill it for 20 minutes on each side.

Things were fine for the first 35 minutes. First it sat there, then it sat there and started oozing juice, then the juice started to dance around and spit and hiss. It was pretty awesome, let me tell you.

However, when I peeked through the oven window with 5 minutes left to go, things had changed somewhat. The top of the oven was now a swirling white, with occasional yellow flashes punctuating the darkness. I decided to open the oven door to take a closer look.

Turns out I'd managed to set my burger on fire. As I opened the door a fireball shot out, nearly singeing my hair, quickly followed by thick billowing smoke. I coughed and spluttered, shut the door, and peered inside to see yellow flames licking the top of my burger. Oops.

Having flashbacks to Backdraft, I turned everything off and waited. I fell back on my years of training in Chemistry class (aka playing with burning splints), and I watched the flame die out as it ran out of air.

I opened the oven door again and retrieved the grill pan, again greeted by more smoke. I decided to get some fresh air into the kitchen just as my new neighbours were walking past, and they looked rather alarmed to see someone wide-eyed and choking, clawing at the window while surrounded by thick billowing clouds of doom. Needless to say in this day and age, they pretended they hadn't noticed and just kept on walking.

I now remember that there's a reason I don't cook meat - this sort of thing has happened before, like that time my sausages burst out in flames, or that time the bacon caught fire. However, everything seems to be fine with the oven now - I guess that's not too surprising as it is designed to withstand heat - and as it turns out I'd actually managed to cook a pretty tasty burger. Mmm, flame grilled!

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